In October, 1991, James Fallows wrote a hilarious takedown of the Economist that ran in the Washington Post’s Outlook Section. The essay attempted to explain why perfectly intelligent people, like Harvard’s Robert Reich (who at the time was in the middle of a squabble with Newsweek’s Robert Samuelson), would say things like: “I, for one, [...]

Bernie Madoff gave his first prison interview (sorry Barbara, Diane, Matt) to the lawyer representing the victims suing his wife, sons, and brother, but it was something of a dud. San Francisco lawyer Joseph Cotchett told ABC News that Bernie was surprised he was able to get away with it for so long. “There were [...]

You won’t find Michelle Leder anywhere on Mediaite’s Power Grid, so Anna Wintour needn’t watch her back. Even obsessed media watchers likely have never heard of Leder’s site, footnoted.org. But if you are interested in the games corporate America plays, it’s one of the best shows in town.

Jim Impoco: Taibbi has received a good deal of attention for his article “The Great American Bubble Machine” in the latest issue of Rolling Stone magazine. Unlike Taibbi, I’d be happy if all the world’s economic problems since the Great Depression could be blamed on Goldman Sachs. That would lend itself to an easy fix. Just re-elect Eliot Spitzer as New York attorney general, point him downtown toward Goldman’s headquarters, and say, sic ‘em!

The A.I.G. Financial Products unit is to the global financial crisis what rickety levees were to Hurricane Katrina. But as Michael Lewis points out in his excellent article in the latest issue of Vanity Fair, F.P., as it’s called, used to be the envy of Wall Street. In 2001, the elite unit accounted for a [...]